The Democrat Pack Is Off And Grinning

July 3, 1987|By Greg Dawson of the Sentinel staff

Ihave seen the future of the 1988 presidential campaign, and it's a lot of bad jokes.

I don't mean the candidates, though at least one could turn out to be a bad joke. I mean the campaigns the candidates will be running. The fact that Ronald Reagan rode the ability to deliver a punch line to consecutive landslides has not been lost on his would-be successors. Only the ability to do so.

That was apparent Wednesday night when the seven Democratic candidates for president -- otherwise known as the Seven Dwarfs -- gathered together for the first time on national television on a special edition of William F. Buckley's Firing Line.

The live portions of the two-hour show -- the exchanges among the candidates and their answers, and non-answers, to questions from Buckley and Bob Strauss, former chairman of the Democratic National Committee -- yielded a handful of vivid impressions.

(Among them: Former Arizona governor Bruce Babbit does too good a Richard Nixon impression ever to get elected.)

But perhaps more revealing were film clips that each man brought along to share with the nation, because for most voters the '88 campaign will consist of TV commercials that show the candidates in their best, if not truest, light. Each candidate was asked to supply a video vignette that showed his style on the campaign trail.

The result: three bad jokes and four lame anecdotes. The Reagan legacy.

Sen. Albert Gore Jr. of Tennessee told a joke about a farmer whose cow had to be shot by a state trooper after the farmer's pickup truck collided with another vehicle.

Babbit told a joke about a construction worker, a mayor and the mayor's wife.

Jesse Jackson offered an anecdote, or maybe it was a parable, about how biscuits come out flat if you don't use baking powder.

Rep. Richard Gephardt of Missouri told a very old joke about Henry Kissinger jumping out of an airplane without a parachute.

Gov. Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts explained how, given a twist of fate, Boston Celtics coach K.C. Jones could have ended up as mayor instead of coach, and Boston Mayor Ray Flynn could have ended up as coach instead of mayor.

Sen. Joe Biden told about the time a Cleveland TV reporter mistook him for baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth.

Sen. Paul Simon of Illinois had an anecdote about mayors in Canada and Chicago.

Each candidate was also asked to provide a 90-second video biography, the sort of thing we're likely to see during the campaign. Jackson, Dukakis and Biden appeared alone, while Gore, Gephardt, Simon and Babbit showed us their families. Gephardt confided that son Matt, 16, had just gotten his driver's license. (Cute.)

The big winner Wednesday night, image-wise, was Dukakis -- bright, self- assured, unpretentious. He spoke too fast but said a lot, drawing the loudest applause of the night from the audience in Houston for his forceful denunciation of Reagan policy in Central America.

Gephardt appeared a shade too slick, Gore a bit too stagy, folding his hands and speaking directly to the camera. Neither looked ripe enough to be president. Biden was charming and glib but less commanding than Dukakis, maybe because he started so many sentences with ''ya know.''

Jackson was Jackson. Simon looked like a cross between Pee-wee Herman and Henry Morgan. And poor Bruce Babbit, well, let me make one thing perfectly clear -- he doesn't have a prayer.